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A. DISCOURSE 


DELIVERED AT THE 


OFFICERS’ GENERAL HOSPITAL, 


AND REPEATED AT THE 


Hampton Hospital, near Fort Monroe, Va., 


THANKSGIVING DAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1864. 


By JAMES MARSHALL. 


PUBLISHED BY THE PATIENTS IN THE HOSPITAL, 


PHILADELPHIA: 

KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, 607 SANSOM STREET. 
1 8 64. 




<us r^\ 










CORRESPONDENCE. 



Officers’ General Hospital, 

Fort Monroe , Va., Sept. 16M, 1864. 


Rev. James Marshall, 

Chaplain U. S. A. 

Dear Sir: —We, the undersigned, desire to publish the discourse 
delivered by you on the 11th inst., the day appointed by the President 
for special Thanksgiving to God, on account of the late victories which 
foreshadow Peace. Many in the Hospital unable to leave their beds or 
to be present on the occasion would like to read it, and circulate it, 
believing it will do great good. We, therefore, respectfully solicit a 
copy for publication, and remain, 

Very truly, 


CHAS. DEVINS, Brig-Gen T Vols. 

Dr. RUSH, Surgeon, U. S. V. 

CHAS. PAYSON, 1st Lieut, and A. D. C. 
Lieut. S. W. MARSHALL, 3d Pa. Art. 

Lieut. PRIESTLY YOUNG, 36th U. S. C. T. 
Chaplain PERKINS, 9th Maine Vols. 

“ ADAMS, 2d N. H. Vols. 

Lieut. ANDREW GROGAN, 6th Conn. Vols. 
Capt. GEO. II. HOOKER, 85th Pa. Vols. 
Capt. BAKER, 39th Ill. Vols. 

Capt. J. A. BLAKE, Comd’t Camp Dist. and 
Military Prison. 

Lleut-Col. J. A. HILL, 11th Maine. 

Lieut. JOHN SCOTT, 16th N. Y. Art. 

Capt. MAPES, 124th N. Y. Vols. 


Lieut. J. H. ENSIGN, 76th Pa. Vols. 

Lieut. G. W. HIRST, Adj’t62d Ohio Vols. 
Lieut. CLARK, 11th Maine Vols. 

Capt. H. F. H. MILLER. 

W. H. MANNING, Hosp. Steward, U. S. A. 
Corp. W. H. GILPATRICK. 

W. TROLLINGER. 

Sergt. A. D. BROOKS. 

T. O’CLOYD. 

W. H. BOYLE. 

Sergt. T. H. BLAKE. 

W. II. TRINNLCK, Citizen, Pa. 

GEO. RUC1I. 

CHAS. G. RUSSEL, Citizen, N. Y. 

CHAS. WOODS, and seventy others. 


REPLY. 

Officers’ General Hospital, 1 

September 17 th, 1864. ) 

Gentlemen :—The sermon you request for publication is at your 
disposal. You have kindly expressed your confidence in its ability to 
do good by greater circulation. I trust, a corresponding indulgence 
may be exercised towards its imperfections when you come to its peru¬ 
sal, as the manifold duties of the Hospital are so untimely and exacting, 
that the desire and effort for doing good may compensate for the many 
short comings. Thanking you for this evidence of your confidence and 
esteem, and praying God’s blessing may attend this feeble effort to pre¬ 
sent the Divine Hand in our struggle for Peace, 

I am, most sincerely, 

JAMES MARSHALL. 


To Brig-GenT Devins, and others. 




■he 


SERMON. 


W 


H 


“ Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace.” 

Rom. xiv., 19. 

The Apostle manifests deep solicitude in this chapter 
about the peace of the Church among the Romans; for, it 
was the great instrument to establish and build up God’s 
kingdom in the world. Hence, his energies were single to 
the honor of the Church of Christ. With watchful eye he 
studied her progress,—with matchless wisdom he guided 
her counsels. Exigencies arose, demanding restraints. Dis¬ 
sensions, “doubtful disputations,” mis-spent zeal, abused 
Christian liberty,-—all filled Paul with anxiety. How, shall 
causeless differences sweep away like a flood the ground¬ 
work of Christian peace ? Shall the bramble rule over the 
olive and the vine? Shall Cains destroy Abels? Shall 
Judases cover the peaceful hearthstones with woe? Paul’s 
restraints were used to protect the brethren, preserve the 
Church’s peace, and advance God’s glory. The text was 
the last of a series of rules for that purpose: “ Let us there¬ 
fore follow after the things which make for peace.” This 
rule was the means to help plant in pure hearts the Com¬ 
monwealth of Israel, so that its rising and unfolding propor¬ 
tions might be the ingathering point of all nations, where, 
casting divine trophies at the feet of Jesus, the Prince of 
Peace, they might join the one grand chorus—“ Peace be 
within thy walls.” 

“ That mystic word of Thine, 0 Sovereign Lord, 

Is all too pure, too high, too deep for me ; 

With weary striving and with longing faint, 

I breathe it back again in prayer to Thee. 

“ As some rare perfume in a vase of clay, 

Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, 

So when thou dwellest in a mortal soul, 

All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.” 



4 


Such is the peace of those, whom faith assures, will he 
future members of the “ general assembly of the first born,” 
through reconciliation with God by faith in the righteous¬ 
ness of Christ. 

We cannot fail to trace the Christian’s peace in its analogy 
to national peace, as the latter is conditioned by the energy 
of the former. When organized wrong, crystallized from 
seething dissensions, threaten public tranquillity, then politi¬ 
cal Pauls wisely issue the rules for peace. 

But peace does not always flow from public quiet, from 
universal prosperity, from worldly wealth, from individual 
influence and personal security; these conditions too often 
beget that peace that breeds corruption, and 

“-nurses dangerous humours up to strength, 

License, and wanton rage, which war, alone, 

Can purge away.” 

Hence, national peace often follows in the wake of conquer¬ 
ing legions, which God uses as battle-axes, to clear the way 
to the “righteousness that exalteth a nation.” Like the 
sword of the Spirit, two-edged and piercing, they lay bare 
national corruptions as the Spirit spreads out the iniquities 
of the heart. Terrible the thought, but 

“ The waste, the woe, the bloodshed and the tears,” 

that follow after war’s harsh thunders, are often pains that 
give peace, as death speaks of Heaven. Suffering makes 
pure first, then peaceful. Centuries of martyrdom and per¬ 
secutions have been the price of liberty. So the peace of 
the Church has flowed from her most convulsive struggles 
for existence. A soul most deeply feels the peace of faith, 
that has sounded the depths of affliction. Citizenship for 
heaven costs a world of wealth in both temporal and spiritual 
resources. So expensive also is citizenship of a State, when 
its peaceful enjoyment is based on stability arising from 
public intelligence and righteous administration of just laws. 
Our duties as true citizens and as loyalists to the country 
of our fathers, are based upon the principle that “right 
makes might,” and not the reverse, in which despots see 
divinity, that “might makes right.” The analogy then 


5 


existing between tbe efforts of Pauls in the Church and 
Pauls in tbe State to secure peace, is manifest and gives us 
tbe inspiration of our tbeme,— 

The Nation’s Prospects of Peace. 

Let us apply tbe text to tbe present condition of our 
nation, and discover, first, what things make for peace ; and 
secondly, why the present prospects are a ground of thanks¬ 
giving to God, in whose bands are tbe destinies of nations ? 

While we speak of our country, her faults, her merits, 
her position, her politics, her moral*character as flowing 
from tbe moral character of her people, we must necessarily 
controvert somebody’s views, and hence rest under tbe old 
charge of preaching politics in tbe pulpit, and thus pollut¬ 
ing tbe sacred office. But war is upon us. It engages all 
our thoughts. We think of it, talk of it, dream of it. It 
has deranged our business, pervaded our homes, and sent 
mourning groups into our sanctuaries. We cannot ignore 
it. The greatest sticklers for purely gospel sermons will 
read the war-news on Sunday rather than listen, not only to 
gospel preaching in their judgment, but also to the grand 
moral significance of passing events in their intimate rela¬ 
tion to the prosperity of the cause of Zion. But we are all 
citizens and soldiers, liable to be drafted, and compelled to 
fight. Ministers are not exempt, but subject to all military 
restrictions. They have, therefore, a right to speak upon 
issues at stake, upon principles involved, upon the moral 
teachings of events, and upon the men that figure in this 
drama of our country. The cause, we believe, is a sacred 
one, and he is a coward that fails to speak the words of 
truth and duty. The thrilling scenes around us fill our 
thoughts. They crowd the very sanctuary of God; and as 
Christians and patriots we should study events, and thank 
the God of battles in accordance with the Executive procla¬ 
mation, for the present cheering prospects of deliverance 
from civil war. 

We approach our country always as a lover of art nears 
the inner sanctuary of a magnificent temple. He admires 
its workmanship, its fitness, its beauty, its silence, its sacred 


6 


associations. His fathers may have worshipped there. If 
true, his awe deepens, and his soul responds to echoes from 
the eternal world. So are our hearts filled with devotion as 
we behold the temple of our liberties, although some of its 
columns may be broken and defaced by the vandal hordes 
of treason. Our fathers reared this national home. They 
fought, suffered, and .died here. Scarcely can we fix our 
eyes upon a page of our history, but they wet with tears in 
view of the sorrows and struggles and sacrifices therein 
displayed by heroes to give us all the privileges of Ameri¬ 
can citizenship. What shall we say of the sacrilege of him 
who first dropped the foul blot of treason upon the sacred 
scroll, rendering thereby his infamy imperishable ? 

“ Is there not some chosen curse, 

Some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, 

Red with uncommon wrath to blast the man 
Who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?” 

I. The prospects of national peace are based, first, upon 
things, developing in this civil conflict, which truly gives 
assurance of the speedy enjoyment of that blessing; and at 
the same time indicate the duty of loyal citizens in the 
premises. [Nearly four years ago, the great tragedy of our 
nation opened. How many votaries have become victims, 
and passed away from the bloody drama ? How often the 
old flag has gone up and down mid the fortunes of battle! 
Thank God, it is still stainless and glorious, waving over 
freemen determined to be free. Hundreds of strongholds 
now bear the proud standard, over which the flag of treason 
trembled with thieving defiance, when the “ stars and 
stripes” were first made the martial shroud of Fort Sumter. 

1. The first thing we mention, that makes for peace is 
the justice of our cause. A reference to the facts of traitors, 
in the origin of the rebellion, shows that their cause was 
based upon perjury, falsehood and oppression. But we need 
not refer to those facts. We need not repeat the causes that 
sent sweeping over the land this destroying tempest of 
arrowy sleet and iron hail. We need not assert that trea¬ 
son first unchained at Yicksburg and Charleston, in Feb- 


7 


ruary and April, 1861, the grim thunderbolts of Mars, 
ploughing the South with wreck and ruin, and casting deep 
death-shades over the whole national domain. We need 
not recall the rebel conspiracy, long and deeply laid; the 
seizure of mints, arsenals and forts; the stealing and plun¬ 
dering of public treasuries; the transfer to the South of war 
munitions; the world-wide scattering of war vessels; the 
*• efforts to bribe soldiers and officials to dishonor their trusts; 
the ignoring of the people’s will to rush seven States into 
the gulf of secession before the instigators left their seats in 
the National Congress; the organization of the Rebel Con¬ 
federacy before President Lincoln was inaugurated. We 
need not remind him familiar with the devices of traitors, 
how secret diplomacy swelled with recognition of our ruin 
through the influence of foreign ministers sent to foreign 
' courts to protect, and save, and honor us. We need not 
point to Sumter’s humiliated emblem of our nationality; to 
our unparalleled leniency towards the worst enemies of 
humanity. We need not further review those acts of 
treachery and baseness, by the very men, now in rebellion, 
who, then, held supreme sway over our destinies at Wash¬ 
ington. We leave all these facts, with simply a reference. 
The black catalogue has become history. The justice of 
our cause has been the rock to stay these mad waves. 
Future generations will wonder at our ignorance of the 
scheme, and our indifference at first to its consummation. 
Northern sympathizing conclaves rejoiced in the rebellious 
events, while the loyal people displayed the very grandeur 
of patience to avoid the horrors of the impending war-cloud 
so soon to burst in streams of fiery rain upon the heads and 
homes of those who invoked its rising out of the great sea 
of human dissensions, like the great beast in the vision of 
the Prophet,—“dreadful and terrible, and strong exceed¬ 
ingly.” But the loyal masses did not shrink from either 
duty or danger. To their shame, however, they were 
willing to do some things; they were willing to compromise 
with open rebellion; they were willing to let the slave-coffle 
wind around the base of Capitol Hill and lift its manacled 
hands in the face of unrighteous rulers; they were willing 


8 


that Washington, the National Capital, might continue a 
slave-mart like Richmond, Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, 
and countless other Southern cities, on whose auction-block, 
the pleas of mothers, the cries of children, the claims of 
men, and the rights of humanity, would go down under the 
torturing and unpaid exactions of sugar-houses, cotton-fields 
and rice-swamps; they were willing to hide their heads 
when asked what they had to do with slavery,—they had 
not moral courage to say, —they had everything to do with it, 
because, first, they shared the national disgrace; secondly, 
they were implicated in its crimes; and, thirdly, they must 
inevitably share its calamities when they came, which then 
were a question of time, and which now are upon us, 
enveloping the land in sackcloth and woe; they were 
willing to do much more—to give up Southern fugitives, to 
repeal Northern obnoxious laws, to guarantee slavery in the 
slave States by so amending the Constitution; and yet all 
these ignoble surrenders were despised and spurned and 
spit upon by traitors because they only lengthened the time 
of their nominal union with Northern “mudsills” and 
“hyaenas;” for, the long laid plan was, Disunion, and an 
Independent Slave Empire, whose grappling irons they 
hoped might sometime swing their chains from New Eng¬ 
land Mountains across to the Pacific Ranges. I need not 
tell you our people were not willing to yield to every re¬ 
bellious demand, nor to cower beneath every traitor’s threat. 
They were not willing to give all our magnificent territorial 
domain to human bondage; to make our free cities and 
towns, stations for Southern planters to linger at with 
human chattels; to give up the fruits of constitutional 
suffrage; to acknowledge the right of secession; to arraign 
our forefathers as guilty; to give Monarchies preference 
over Republics; to blot out the memories of noble deeds for 
the Union; to break in pieces that grand old Bell in Inde¬ 
pendence Hall, rung at the great Declaration of our Nation’s 
birth, on which was the proclamation of God to the enslaved 
Hebrews: “ Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land, and 
to all the inhabitants thereof.” They were not willing to 
grant that the principle of slavery was right, whether ap- 


9 


plied to whites or blacks, thus plunging Northern white 
laborers into the degradation of Southern bondage,—both 
the bondage of the poor whites, ignorance and poverty ; and 
the bondage of the negro, ignorance and oppression. They 
were not willing to yield to the State-rights’ heresy, that any 
band of disaffected traitors might perjure themselves and 
forswear allegiance, and so tumble the Republic to pieces 
whenever they pleased, thus branding our Government as 
no Government. In view of such surrenders which treason 
demanded, should the people become disgraced and dis¬ 
honored in the sight of Nations and in the sight of a just 
God by yielding all loyal sentiment ? all national virtue ? 
all true and noble manhood? No, Never! NEVER! 
Civil war was-preferable to national dishonor, to the loss of 
national virtue. Hence Union and Human Rights gleamed 
from a million bayonets. Loyalty deepened in millions of 
hearts. A tide-wave of willing sacrifice rolled over the 
land to purify and pacify and hence preserve the Nation in 
its territorial and moral integrity. How much heart was 
crowded into “ God bless you,” as the sons and brothers, 
husbands and fathers, willingly entered the stern conflict of 
war, forced upon the people by four months of open war¬ 
like and treasonable acts, after many years’ preparation 
before the Nation called her loyal sons to her defense and 
salvation. 

Our people have fought three years, nobly, bravely and 
successfully as the contracting area of rebellious territory 
plainly shows. The battles are not all fought. Loyalty to 
our cause must yet meet the secret foes at home, whose re¬ 
cord in this conflict runs parallel with the Arnolds of the 
Revolution. But the heavy blows administered against the 
strongholds of open rebellion and the masked batteries of 
secret foes, have more clearly revealed the sympathy of the 
world’s despots with the traitors; so that, when we view the 
rebellion from the stand-point of its origin, we stand more 
firmly than ever before, upon —the justice of our cause as 
the first and most important thing that makes for peace. 

But let us view further that principle of justice as dis¬ 
played in the character and design of the parties engaged. 


10 


The insurgent party arose against Law and Order. The loyal 
party resisted to counteract Disunion and Anarchy. Hence, 
mighty antagonisms are in deadly struggles. The real object 
of the insurgent party is, Independence, upon the principle 
of State Rights, which would shatter the rebel government 
into untold divisions, if peace prevailed throughout its 
borders. The rebellion to-day proves the assertion true. 
Grant secession, and the grand old Union would crumble 
into a host of confederacies like those in Germany, Mexico, 
and South America, with all the horrors of their internal 
wars. Grant division, as the enemies of the Government at 
home and abroad desire, then will not destruction follow ? 
The voice of history is warning. The Trojan divisions 
gave Troy to Greece. Grecian divisions crushed Grecian 
liberty under the despotic heel of Philip. So the Persian 
throne passed into the power of the king of Macedon. 
Roman divisions made Rome the easy prey of the Turk. 
Where are the ancient Britons ? Their dissensions opened 
gates for the Saxons, Danes and Normans to enter and sup¬ 
plant all vestiges of the race except the name of the British 
Island. “If a kingdom be divided against itself that king¬ 
dom cannot stand I” Should the insurgents succeed, are 
there not modern Williams, and Philips, and Turks, who 
would rise to Mexican thrones on the ruins of other Repub¬ 
lics ? The following would be our steps to ruin—first, dis¬ 
union ; then disintegration; then standing armies in fighting 
confederacies; then other European Maximilians ; then re¬ 
publics, failures; then anarchy; then, finally, as in those 
nations, whose wrecks line the shores of history, a relapse 
into barbarism. Present efforts of traitors and the active 
sympathies of foreign tyrants are but the signal waves fore¬ 
telling our doom if we fail to restore the insurgent States 
to allegiance. Now the position of the insurgent party is 
war, until they gain that independence that breeds slavery 
instead of freedom. The insurgent President spurns all 
proposals of peace until they can be received only “by 
virtue of his office,” he says, “as President of an Inde¬ 
pendent Confederacy.” First, independence, then peace, 
then our ruin as a great nation. Such independence would 


11 


give to tlie people the throne of Herod, with the liberties of 
Ilerod’s subjects. Let us not be deceived. Davis is a giant 
and holds the South that our armies have not delivered from 
his despotism, in his iron grasp. His position is war unto 
success, else the alternative, death or banishment and dis¬ 
grace. The position of the loyal party is peace; in the 
beginning it was peace, during the times covered by the 
President’s Proclamations, it was peace ; to-day, it is peace ; 
peace, upon conditions of allegiance to law, and the fulfill¬ 
ment of the conditions which traitors have invoked as war- 
measures. Peace, peaceably if possible, but peace forcibly, 
if such necessity must exist,J;o restore the Union and estab¬ 
lish anew the principles of Human Eights. 

Our first position is further illustrated by the rebels re¬ 
belling against laws of their own enacting. They had never 
been ruled with tyranny, for they had ruled themselves. 
How many years had they shaped the policy of this Govern¬ 
ment, until they very nearly ripened it for ruin. So far, the 
North was standing on the same platform. Finally, that 
long governmental policy, which should be our shame 
instead of our boast, educated the masses to use intelli¬ 
gently the right of suffrage. But had rewards or punish¬ 
ments been unjustly administered, redress could have been 
found in the legitimate channels. If failure there, then they 
might have unsheathed the revolutionary sword, if justified 
by the probabilities of success. But the South loved slavery 
with all its lust, and avarice, and power, and arrogance. 
Why deny it ? They confess it the cause of their rebellion. 
We know it is the strength of their resistance. They had 
long legally intrenched slavery within all departments of the 
Government,—within the Legislative, the Executive and the 
Judicial; and all foreign courts had apologists for its existence. 
But the disease produced its own remedy. “ To be a slave,” 
says a Kentuckian, “is to have no father, no mother, no 
sister, no brother, no wife, no husband, no son, no daughter, 
no lover, no house, no lands, no property, no rights, no 
privileges, no pursuit of happiness, no vote, no education, 
no security, no advocate, no redress, no will, no self, no 
Bible, no God; to have nothing but a master.” 


12 


Such was the disease that brought its own cure bj its 
destruction. Such a system of barbarism inaugurated the 
long ripening rebellion. Such a system, we are told by the 
wisest prophet of its practical lessons expressed in secession 
—A. H. Stephens—is the corner-stone of civilization! But 
God’s face is flint against it. Liberty and Slavery can 
never exist together again in the restored Union. Yet we 
have men, whose public record in the North is full of evi¬ 
dence of complicity with its crime, who say—Let disunion 
come, rather than this system of barbarism should go down. 
But all the moral forces of the world ignore it. As sure as 
God and humanity and all the moral forces of the age are 
against it, God will not give us peace until it is blotted from 
this nation—until with the generous magnanimity of a great 
people, we open wide the doors of Christian benevolence to 
a race, whose sufferings and wrongs have given us wealth 
and strength, until they have been turned as a rock against 
our grasping avarice. But slavery can still be saved, by 
surrendering to the rebels all the rights their treason for¬ 
feited,—by supplanting the armor of liberty now worn by 
200,000 black soldiers, with the rags and shackles of slavery, 
—by making increasing calls upon our white men, to repress 
incursions along our borders,—and by reconstructing the 
Union upon the basis of two, or five, fighting confederacies ; 
whereas the way to peace is in the paths of Grant, Sherman, 
and Sheridan on land, and Winslow and Farragut on water, 
whose grand though terrible commissions will restore the 
Union upon the basis of Justice and Liberty. Then Al¬ 
mighty Providence will stand as sentinel over our homes, 
Our country will be restored wholly fkee, and not recon¬ 
structed, partly SLAVE. 

Now God uses wicked means to accomplish great results. 
His restraints have rested all along on rebel efforts for our 
destruction. The rams Atlanta and Tennessee, and pirate 
Alabama were first permitted to assault our national shield 
in order that we might measure more wisely the desperate 
designs of our adversary. So with the enemy’s strongholds 
all along the coast and inland. But we need not boast. Our 
own men are wicked, our rnlers bad, their opponents worse, 


13 


and the war rages ; but none of these give character to the 
cause, any more than a wicked professor determines the cause 
of Christ. Divine agencies are even grappling with wicked 
ones, both to use and conquer them. Pharoah was made to 
feed the church. Ilaman raised Mordecai high in the 
Persian court. Joseph’s brethren raised him to great power 
in Egypt. J5o has God used the rebels and the wrongs of 
the slave in which our nation has so long been implicated, 
to promote the cause of freedom and universal brother¬ 
hood, not simply by freeing the negro, but by making, Abo¬ 
lition, a solid fact, instead of it being a rod of scorpions to 
whip prejudices into rebel ranks. So also have the appeals 
to foreign help, financial embarrassment, and Northern sym¬ 
pathy, stimulated the loyalty of the nation to more vigorous 
efforts and unbending determination to settle its account 
with traitors upon the terms of a righteous and permanent 
peace. 

The above considerations upon State Eights and Slavery 
as the cause of our troubles are confirmed by the words and 
acts of our early fathers. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, 
Franklin—all those eminent worthies would suffer starva¬ 
tion and death in the South to-day for their views. Jefferson 
penned the strongest denunciations of slavery in the Decla¬ 
ration of Independence. They were expunged for expedi¬ 
ency. But what did they do respecting State Eights ? 
Gather together without unity a few separate nationalities ? 
If so, our nation has been sending up false signals to the 
world for nearly a century. We are not then one nation 
bound together by one organic law; but our States are 
simply beads strung upon a rope of sand. Secession is the 
child of State-Eights, and Slavery is the father of—both. Now 
the Union has no controversy with States further than the 
welfare of each, and the stability and allegiance of the whole; 
yet the cry of interference has sown the wind, and to-day we 
are reaping the whirlwind. But the rotteness of the State- 
Eights dogma is unfolding its premises and conclusions and 
results in the battle-fields of this war. Our people will now 
permanently settle this question. Peace speaks through 
the thunders that rain death on the head of this long skulk- 


14 


ing viper. But suppose we fail to establish the Government 
upon the supremacy of the Constitution in all its beneficent 
provisions; then civil war becomes the rule, instead of the 
exception; then turn to the midnight heavens, and while the 
starry hosts silently move on and speak peace to the Uni¬ 
verse, and ever and anon behold the stars shooting athwart 
the sky, and going out in darkness, we will be reminded of 
the various States of America plunging into the oblivion of 
the past until all were gone—then wdiere shall we turn our 
gaze for the lost Pleiades of the great Union—once so bright 
and brilliant in the firmament of historic Liberty, but now 
buried in the chaos of Slavery, State-Rights and Secession ? 
Hence the justice of our cause comes home to the soldier, 
the sailor, the civilian in whatever pursuit of life or in 
whatever position of influence he may be placed. This war 
originated among the enemies of human rights. It is a war 
on our part for national existence, for principle, for an 
asylum for the oppressed and a home for the free, and there¬ 
fore every Christian and patriot can enter our armies to fight 
for an honorable and speedy peace, asking God’s blessing 
upon every advancing step. 

2. The next thing that makes for peace, is the fact, that 
this nation, united and free, is the hope of true Republicanism 
throughout the world. 

Our example has planted in other nations the germ of 
human rights, which our prosperity and happiness so long 
have watered and fed, until the ideal of the prophet has 
been realized to many true patriots. Wide-branching is 
the tree from which so many, even in despotic lands, now' 
pluck the fruits of liberty. Thus a large liberal party has 
strengthened and gained great power. But the countries of 
exclusive rights, whose armed and uncertain peace will 
always be disturbed by the patriotic breathings of the 
people,—so long as they must labor and suffer, not for them¬ 
selves, but for feudal successions and royal despots,—are the 
enemies of the republicanism of the United States. They 
desire our destruction. Despotism and Liberty are irrecon¬ 
cilable, implacable foes. Their principles are antagonisms. 


15 


A Russian Alexander, a French Napoleon, and the name¬ 
less slavocrat over a Southern Confederacy, are one in 
sympathy. Either would wipe out popular rights, and 
confine governments to the hereditary few. Either would 
dispose of the people without consulting them. This liberal 
party, running through all nations, now silent and deep, 
then openly upon the surface, has so reacted upon the 
thrones of monarchies, that bold leaders speak in each 
nation with thundering tones for popular rights—so that 
aristocratic prerogatives often tremble in the balance of 
insurrection, from which Democracy has snatched so much 
force and progress. Their great ally on this continent has 
fought desperately the last four years to gain supreme sway. 
His flings have struck deep and deadly. Reaction in 
Europe has favored freedom. Liberal principles, checked 
and curtailed at times, have deepened and expanded. 
Failures only embodied events of greater moment. The 
blood of martyrs was only promising seed. Its fruits were 
manifest when princes appealed to popular suffrage to settle 
great questions. The elections in France, Italy, Greece, 
the Principalities of the Danube, and other states, did not 
establish popular rights, but they did more firmly establish 
the liberal party in the knowledge of human justice, and 
more thoroughly educated the millions of electors to at last 
strike and maintain. These princes may be selfish. They 
appealed to the majestic will of the people in general suf¬ 
frage, to strengthen their power and solve international 
difficulties. But they also revealed their own corruption 
and weakness to the liberty-loving masses, and now, while 
this nation is in the throes of revolution, a general war 
threatens Europe. Everywhere armies are mustering and 
deploying, war-emergencies rising, revolutions seething, 
nations changing bounderies, empires rocking, republics 
falling, conventions assembling,—everywhere from the 
Pacific shores sweeping eastward to the Indias—is agita¬ 
tion, overturning, revolution, reformation. 

“Worlds are changing,—heaven beholding.” 

But “the Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the 


16 


storm.” He is overruling all for his glory. Out of these 
world-wide struggles that compel each nation to study well 
the forces of its own stability, are cheering evidences of 
peace—not an armed'peace, based on the plots of the Vienna 
Peace Conference of the three great powers, whose daring 
schemes would prevent Denmark and 'Germany uniting 
like Italy under the headship of a Victor Emanuel, and 
organizing democracy into a mighty progressive power;—not 
an armed peace, based on treaty obligations at the expense 
of popular rights’—as that of the London Conference, which 
consulted only the interests of feudal succession, limits of 
dynasties, petty jealousies, an(J political power, showing 
thus that the anarchy of European affairs is an earnest of 
non-interference in American matters; but they foreshadow 
a peace that is based on the eternal principles of human 
liberty,—upon the recognition of popular rights,—upon 
the great principle of the brotherhood of the human race,— 
upon the principle that weakness shall be protected,—upon 
the principle that governments were ordained for equal 
justice;—upon the principle that God did not make this 
world to be the scene of violence and wrong, wherein the 
many must forever tamely submit to be the stupid tools of 
the few.. Our national example has set in motion this 
logical train of events, which must go on until the globe is 
girdled by a brotherhood of free nations. The tendency 
of these grand struggles is to sign the death-warrants of 
Absolutism, False Religion, and Human Slavery,—to pledge 
freedom to human consciences and the advancement of 
civilization,—and to finally surrender the kingdoms of this 
world to the saints of the Most High God. 

How the voice that comes sounding across the Atlantic 
from these throes of nations in Europe is the voice of 
Liberty—and the Liberty that, throbbing in the world’s 
convulsions, looks for its final triumph to the success of the 
Union cause in America. While absorbed in our country’s 
struggle, we are not dead to free thought and action in 
other parts of the world. France has true patriots, even be¬ 
hind her imperial throne. Laboulaye, Gasparin, Jules Favre, 
and others, are our friends. Our cause is the cause of the 


17 


-liberal party of tbe world. The words of these French 
patriots are cloven tongues to-day upon the heads of 
American freemen. England, although a moral island, in 
this, grand struggle, has Bright, Cobden, Mills, and others, 
whose pleas are for humanity against the fusion of English 
aristocracy and Southern slavery. England has hearts yet 
free that are touched with the cries of the laborer, and 
advocate his cause in the shadow of the throne. But where 
are Poland’s heroes? All martyrs to liberty, writhing 
beneath Russia’s immense war-legions. Some have been 
hung from the glacis of the citadel of Warsaw; others, 
transported to Siberian mines, with the noblest aspirations 
crushed, that ever thrilled the heart, are chained in the cold 
fortresses of despotism. Where is Italian liberty? Watch¬ 
ing from the very hills of Rome the progress of our cause, 
and admiring the magnitude of our development as the 
war goes on. Her Garibaldi waits with lonely impatience, 
yet hopeful. Italy has exiled her princes, given her suf¬ 
frage to her people, but lies bound under the power which 
encircles Rome and proceeds from the “patrimony of St. 
Peter.” When those grand spirits suffer and die that their 
fatherland may be like America, united and free, do we 
wonder our cause they believe to be theirs ? Do we wonder 
they seek a refuge here ? The ancient city of Athens had 
an altar of mercy, to which the unfortunates of foreign lands 
fled for refuge and protection. They obtained both. The 
grandeur and hospitality of Athens are renowned in 
ancient literature, because 

“ The distressed have made it sacred.” 

So the shield which America has thrown around the fugi¬ 
tives from political wrong, will ever be sacred in history. 
The same spirit that has crushed Poland and Italy, is 
leagued to-day to give independence to the South, destroy 
the United States as a first-class power, and eventually dig 
the grave of liberty in this land. But let the Union be 
restored “ as it should be,” and it will be the world’s great 
breakwater against the tide-waves of absolute power, and 
a guarantee of peace to the lovers of liberty. 

But many of those friends of liberty are with us in per- 


18 


son. They are fighting in onr armies. True to his prin¬ 
ciples, an Irishman said “I enlisted for two years, eight 
days after I landed in New York. I came out to get a 
home for my family. The rebellion was in the land. I 
knew the liberty of America was the liberty of Ireland, for 
the United States is truly 1 the home of the free and the 
asylum for the oppressed of all nations.’ I want to leave 
my children no richer fortune, than that of a home in this 
country.” Here is true loyalty, giving itself expression in 
confidence after the hardships and dangers and wounds of a 
two years’ campaign. Loyalty was a deep sentiment har¬ 
dened into principle that was infused into the very fibres of 
his being. There was also Lieutenant Karnasch, who fell 
before Atlanta, most faithful, most loyal, among the bravest 
of the brave. He remarked in view of the terrible results 
to all citizens in this country of the success of the Union 
cause: “ If I had become a Prussian soldier, I am confident 
I could have never felt such a strong devotion for my 
country as I feel for my adopted country, unless Prussia 
had become a safe Republic—had become young Germany. 
I love Germany intensely, but I bewail it, while I love 
America intensely and admire—worship it. I thank Pro¬ 
vidence for being in existence during such a grand period 
for the good fortune of my present lot.” We can say of 
him in words appropriate to all the noble heroes that have 
fallen, both from our own homes and from the military re¬ 
strictions and crushing bondage of other lands, who have 
thus nobly, like Revolutionary DeKalb, laid their bones in 
the soil of America to be forever watered by the dews 
from the Tree of Liberty: 

“All is not dead ! 

Still in your midst something lingers to-day 
Of the loved and departed, untouched by decay ; 

The virtues he cherished yet live and will last, 

When the scenes of the present are lost in the past. 

All is not dead ! 

Nobly he fell! 

Not in the winter of age bending low, 

Wasted and worn—in the summer’s warm glow— 

Strong in his manhood—hope gilding his sky— 

In the pathway of duty he sank down to die— 

Nobly he fell!” 


19 


How many such sons of freedom we have in our army, 
both from our homes and from abroad. This is loyalty as 
a deep, abiding, energizing sentiment, a loyalty that will 
sacrifice and fight for liberty wherever endangered, not only 
because the hopes of millions are conditioned by it, but 
because it is the manifestation of the highest type of poli¬ 
tical right that proceeds from the bosom of God. 

It is a loyalty that sends forth a moral power to restrain 
despots and to guarantee the triumph of Right. Our ex¬ 
ample, therefore, is the Pharos rising above the waves of 
Revolution to enlighten and cheer upward-struggling na¬ 
tionalities, while their moral progress and force are pledges 
of one speedy and righteous peace. 

3. In view then of these grand issues to this country and 
to the world, and to the cause of truth, everywhere and for 
all time, that must flow from the success of our cause, the 
next thing that will make for peace is our full duty to the 
defenders of this grand cause —to the soldiers of the army 
and to the sailors of the navy. 

The first and best thing we can give our soldiers is the 
Gospel of Peace. The gospel unfolds the principles for which 
they are fighting. While strengthened thus with heavenly 
armour, they are fitting themselves for the hardships and 
dangers and death that crowd upon them. Have they the 
gospel, all things else will come. The gospel gives food, 
water, wisdom, redemption. Without these, man is wretched; 
with them, happy. The soul demands the gospel. Soldiers 
want Christ in their hearts. Without Christ, men are Cains; 
with him, Abels. Without Christ, men are liars; with him, 
sons of God. What is life in any form without God in 
Christ? A throne may be a dungeon. Wealth and power 
may be a hell. Progress is only deeper enmity to God, and 
finally, deeper distress of soul. These assertions are evi¬ 
dent truths now to all thinking men in the army. Peace 
will be speedy and salutary in proportion to the gospel 
spirit imbibed and practiced by the soldiers. 

If the gospel is the best thing we can give our defenders 
to fit them for war and peace and eternal blessedness, then 


20 


let us thank God for the Christian Commission—the special 
agency of the times to work with the Church of Christ. If 
the Government and the Sanitary Commission most abun¬ 
dantly supply the bodily wants of the army and navy, so 
the Christian Commission combines the good of both body 
and soul. Showers of religious truth pour down on every 
group of men throughout the nation. Its influence follows 
the soldiers to the outposts, into the trenches, the camps, the 
hospitals, on to the transports—everywhere a soldier lives. 
It dresse'S his wounds, bathes his fevered brow, satisfies the 
body and feeds the soul with the bread of eternal life. It 
forms a system of unceasing communication between the 
soldiers and their homes. Not a good thought rises, but 
its quiet presence turns it into the channel of divine grace. 
Christian men and women thank God and take courage 
daily at the vast revenue to the peace and prosperity of the 
nation, this agency of the people is funding. This mighty, 
ever-present, all pervading Christian power is the grandest 
agency ever developed in the history of Christian benevo¬ 
lence to sanctify and ennoble the qualities of manhood de¬ 
veloped by the sternest realities of life—the hardships of 
war. It reminds us of the days of our Savior, when by 
twos and by twelves and by seventies his disciples preached 
the glad tidings from house to house, by the way-side, in 
the desert, and to assembled multitudes. May the promises 
encourage the people to sow by means of this agent in the 
morning, and withhold no good thing in the evening. The 
seeding will not be in vain. The truth will lodge in thou¬ 
sands of hearts, that otherwise would never hear it. When 
the war closes, and all return to civil pursuits, daily reviews 
of army scenes, and experiencies, and merciful providences, 
will become means of grace. May we not hope for a general 
revival of deeper religious thought ? Will not the moral 
tone of the nation be elevated? Will not the Church be 
clothed with new honors? The harvest of truth in this 
world will give a faint conception of that glorious throng 
who will join the “ Harvest Home” in the world to come. 

Another way to support our brave boys in the field 
is —to show them that you appreciate their sacrifices in a 


21 


noble cause. This can be done by not complaining of 
scarcity of workmen and hardness of labor at home, but 
by doing everything possible for their bodily and mental 
comfort. Home laborers are absolutely essential. Their 
v'ork is hard; but they command their hours. Few will 
exchange with soldiers in the field. No class of men work 
harder than soldiers during a campaign. They give their 
lives willingly, dig nights, fight days, suffer everything pos¬ 
sible to save the nation,—to transmit through the ages 
untold blessings. Marching through heat, dust, mud and 
rain, receiving in battle honorable furloughs from wounds, 
or falling in honorable though obscure graves, how astound¬ 
ing yet commendable their patience, their fidelity, their 
heroism! 

“ Theirs not to reason why,—• 

Theirs but to do and die !” 

While we cannot let their memory die, we cannot omit 
that other picture at home. The wife, mother or:sister 
works, works, works,—quietly, cheerfully works,—support 
ing the family,—sending the soldiers comforts,—lifting 
them hourly at the throne of grace,—writing words of 
cheerful hope,—inspiring the soldier-hearts with the holy 
cause,—here in ten thousand homes is there heroism more 
grandly sublime than any ever displayed on the field of 
suffering and glory! 

How many names once obscure have there been brought 
to the light of historic honor, because of the sacrifices 
made. Families have given three, four, five sons and 
a father.—Write high their names on the roll of ‘honor. 
They are now the royal houses of the nation. Uncorrupted 
by hereditary wealth, true patriotic nobility combines with 
purity of soul. More enviable will be their fame than the 
princely honors of earthly courts. Such is heroism, such 
is the price of Union—Liberty—Peace. 

Again, letter-writing may encourage or dishearten our 
soldiers. It is a mighty power for good or evil. What an 
army of missives daily, either unfold the sweets of affec¬ 
tion, loyalty to truth, and willing sacrifice for the cause, or 
else, a complaining, disheartening spirit. If home-words 


22 


are cheering, the soldier is strengthened for his work; if 
complaining, begging him to come home, even urging him 
to desert, the most manly spirit sinks—he is unfitted for 
duty. Some letters breathe only distrust, complaint, hard 
times. Such an influence disheartens the truest and bravest. 
Hard for a soldier to argue against blood and sense. But 
those families only increase their privations, prolong the 
war, charge to the government what it is not guilty of, 
complicate difficulties that must exist in a war of such 
magnitude, and often disgrace the name by inducing the 
soldier-member to suffer the penalty of desertion. Patriot¬ 
ism with them is measured by life’s daily wants. It rises 
and falls with personal comforts. Such a home-spirit is 
transferred to the army. Every man manufactures ideas. 
Disparaging thoughts are always more readily received 
than hopeful ones;—so the flood of letters daily influencing 
the army, will either educate it for defeat or victory;— 
either rob our brave boys of all heart for their work, or 
infuse them with heroism of battle in the noblest cause that 
ever engaged warriors or statesmen. 

Besides our duty to make correspondence frequent, and 
sanitary, as well as patriotic and Christian, our historical 
knowledge will be extensive. Every soldier is the family 
historian. He details his own experience in marches and 
battles. Hence localities, movements, commanders, battles, 
causes, features and results,—all will be familiar in each 
family circle. General intelligence more liberal and criti¬ 
cal. The American people will be missionaries of peace, 
to help naturalize aliens to republicanism and Christianity. 

4. Another element that makes for peace to the nation, 
is—the true courage we see displayed both among civilians and 
soldiers. 

In the soldier, true courage is not recklessness of life, not 
passionate bursts of bravery, not vulgar blasphemy as death 
approaches, but true courage is thoughtful, serious, earnest. 
It seeks peace, avoids bloodshed, yet strikes boldly in a 
just cause. True courage is the silent tread of the regi¬ 
ment—the death-like march tO| face the emergency, when 
duty ignores danger. The true soldier fears no more, then, 


23 


the blue glamour from the cannon’s throat, than the trav¬ 
eler fears the lightning playing across the electric cloud be¬ 
tween him and his home. The same spirit,—silent, yet 
determined to crush this rebellion, is more general and 
growing to-day, among the people, than since the rebellion 
inaugurated this war. True courage demands no more 
armistice with treason than with murder. It ceases not to 
strike till every traitor surrenders without conditions. This 
war is not for this or that man;—it is for principle as eternal 
as the Throne of God. True courage wants peace—a peace 
that will lay rebellion prostrate at the feet of the Republic. 
Such peace in this country is Emancipation, while slavery is 
Disunion and War. If all shackles could fall to-day from the 
limbs of slaves, there would be immediate peace. Slavery 
staked its life on the struggle it invoked. Kill that and the 
struggle ends. What would we be fighting for? Same 
race, language and religion. Political gravity would gather 
these states around the organic law as the magic power of 
the sun rolls the planets in their cycles. Now if true 
courage wants peace, and emancipation is peace, then the 
growing courage of the nation is the silver lining on the 
cloud of war. It restores South Carolina, Georgia, Missis¬ 
sippi, and other rebellious states to allegiance and peace, 
because it makes their slaves unionists by making them 
politically free. It makes the poor whites unionists, by 
removing them from a life unschooled, ragged, indolent, 
wretched, to a life of education, industry, hope, and happi¬ 
ness. Maryland proves this by abolishing slavery in her 
new constitution, and inviting free enterprise to her re¬ 
sources. Thus new forces rule in hearts and homes and 
laws. A new world will now renovate, and settle the old, 
unsettled world. But the old state of things is all changed 
—Plunge it back shall we to the condition of four years 
since ? Pulling the moon from its orbit with a string 
would be as easy. Why have been over a million bayonets 
gleaming in war? Why have been millions of treasure 
expended ? Why have oceans of most precious blood 
made truly sacred the nation’s soil ? Are we so fond of 
war ahead as to re-enact the bloody drama? All this war 


24 


for nothing ? Come back then, traitors, with all your old 
rights! Nationalize slavery and play for Liberty 4th of July 
farces l Shall we raise a standing army to shackle again 
200,000 slaves whom we have educated with bayonets and 
cannon for freedom ? Shall all old malignant prejudices 
be replaced to block the car of truth and righteousness ? 

True courage rides upon the advancing crest of God’s 
providences and forgetting the things that made war, seeks 
peace in destroying the causes of war, when they have in¬ 
augurated their own destruction. We thank God for this 
element of peace, so growing and hardening into national 
character. 

But two dark features oppose this: one in the soldiers, 
the other in the nation at large. Soldiers complain of 
wicked men, heartless commanders, and ten thousand other 
faults. Taking a regimental or hospital stand-point, they 
judge the nation is going to ruin. Grant there is great 
godlessness, yet this does not justify despair, if a few. 
righteous men can be found. God uses wicked agents to 
perform great ends. Instead of fault-finding, let us exer¬ 
cise charity and repentance. It requires giants to do the 
work of the Rebellion in order to crush it. We have them 
at the head of the Departments at Washington, and also 
at the Courts of Foreign Nations. Subordinates may have 
tried to defeat their honest and loyal efforts; but God has 
taken care of the cause. In the national machinery, wheels 
may be crushed, yet the mighty enginery of divine provi¬ 
dence moves on. A brace may fall out from the national 
edifice, yet the building will stand and the repairing only 
beautifies and strengthens it. 

Again, in respect to the people, we have had dark times 
in this war, because they lost confidence. Their confidence 
was based on earthly grounds. It was not established on 
the divine promises. So the nation trembled for existence, 
when a forged proclamation inflated the gold bubble for 
tyrants to play with. After a great army had swung with 
unparalleled rapidity for hundreds of miles around and 
over great natural and artificial fortresses, until it sat down 
under the walls of the enemy’s capital, full of promise from 


25 


all chances of warfare—yet the war-giant failed to enter 
the breach at first as designed, but resumed his accustomed 
guard, yet the nation desponds, wonders if the cause is 
just, and most criminally talks about the conditions of 
humiliation and eternal disgrace. How the commercial 
barometer rises and falls with the thickness of the iron-mail 
of ocean steamers. How personal malice and disappoint¬ 
ment will let fly the venomous shafts of inordinate ambition 
at the very heart of the nation, and cause iron-souled patriots 
and veteran soldiers to quail before the conflict of ideas. 
How hardened become brokers on “’Change,” who hail 
defeats that lengthen purse-strings, and measure the value 
of groans for freedom with the rise and fall of stocks. 
Such is confidence in men—in human affairs—fickle, fatal, 
ephemeral. A single adverse breath wrecks all human 
frameworks, and the dire results to fortunes, homes, nations, 
become the current events of history. How different the 
confidence that anchors a soul in God—that acknowledges 
the God of nations. God saves nations for the few faithful 
and trusting, who believe that “The fear of the Lord is 
better than confidence in man or in princes.” We want 
such confidence as a nation. Like the captives of Baby¬ 
lon we may rebuke the Nebuchadnezzar of the world :— 
“ Our God whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the 
burning fiery furnace.” By faith in God, chastened and 
humbled by his frowning dispensations, our heart will get 
cheer from the deep-toned sympathy that comes from the 
patriots of Geneva, pure and invigorating as the air that 
sweeps down from Alpine summits, and as firm as the Alpine 
foundations themselves. We thank God in the midst of 
public distrust, domestic treason and despotic sympathy 
with every thing that opposes the Union, for this voice 
from the city of the old Beformers. Coming when con¬ 
ventions are studying to smother the flames of liberty and 
stain manhood, we prize this sympathy the more, and hail 
it as an earnest of our own deliverance from the besetting 
prejudices of party spirit, and from the crimes we have 
nourished while quietly boasting of liberty and peace. 

We do not doubt the final result. To waver would 


26 


be to ignore all past teachings. Our cause is one of 
justice and humanity. We may have a great defeat to 
endure yet. We have more courage to meet the event. 
But it may seem at times that patriotism was dying out 
upon our altars. Apathy reigns. We inquire—Where 
are true, honest, noble men ? All gone to the enemy ? All 
willing to surrender the honor won ?—the great principles 
attained ? All willing to dishonor the graves of a million 
heroes ? Is this professed patriotism only a miserable, sel¬ 
fish, mercenary imitation ? Is it the service of treason in 
the livery of democracy ? If true, then we are fit to be 
slaves. We are unworthy of our liberty. A base, ignoble 
race, digging, crowding, mudrolling for gold. We will 
crawl to the magic of our own hiss. Let the valiant few pile 
us up as breastworks, behind which to vindicate the sweet¬ 
ness of death to the shame of surrender. But that is not 
our character. We have tories and cow-boys. But our 
soldiers are patriots. True, they take the large bounty of 
the patriotic people as pledges of support to home friends 
if they fall. The people are rich. Let the country pour 
its wealth into the lap of the noble soldiery. They earn it, 
they need it. They possess true courage. They hope in 
God. In all these convulsions, they see the divine hand 
uplifted. Their loyalty is deep and abiding. They hope 
in the Republic. They are fighting for peace. Future 
honors will be theirs. May we all—soldiers and civilians— 
prepare for delays and defeats. May we praise God for 
victories. “ In that day, the Lord alone shall be exalted.” 

II. My dear friends, in view of the principles then that 
form the groundwork, rear the framework, and complete 
and adorn the grand temple of our cause, and which point 
to ultimate peace as unerringly as the finger of heavenly 
light directed the Eastern Magi to the infant Redeemer, the 
Prince of Peace, we may reverently thank God to-day in 
His divine courts, we may humbly repent of our sins, we 
may more, implicitly trust in the God of Battles for final 
deliverance from civil war. But new grounds have lately 
brightened our prospects of peace. If the principles of our 


27 


cause and the promises of the past give hope, so the cheer¬ 
ing events of the present as they gleam along our national 
horizon, should deepen our humility and nerve our sad 
though thankful hearts for the speedy and final triumph. 
Telegrams have flashed in sheeted flame over the nation 
the words ,—"victory , victory!” Farragut has spoken from 
the mast-head of his flag-ship:—We have forced the iron 
gates of Mobile Bay;—we have silenced the enemy’s fiery 
enfilades ;—we have repossessed our stolen fortresses,—we 
have caught in our naval drag-net the death-lurking schools 
of submarine batteries, while we mourn over the watery 
sepulchre of the gallant Craven and his crew;—we have 
pierced the iron flakes of the huge leviathan Tennessee, 
conqured and captured him, and now we are prepared to 
speak peace to the rebellious city when she signals her 
allegiance to law. Sherman has placed the cap-stone— 
Atlanta—on the battle-monument in Georgia, and rendered 
famous in war annals the battles, sieges, marches, and other 
military operations that have given crowning success to his 
glorious army. Grant has flanked once more the rebellious 
screw, and cut off the Weldon thread. From every quarter 
comes bright intelligence. How great the contrast from the 
condition one month since, when, while the victorious forces 
were mustering and deploying, the nation was desponding. 
Great campaigns seemed baffled; bloody assaults seemed 
fruitless; long lists of the fallen braves appalled the nation ; 
Joabs were shouting peace, while spreading carnal weapons 
with concealed and bloody hands; the press was teeming 
with appeals to the worst elements of depraved human 
nature to resist the draft, to rebel against high prices, to 
complicate financial embarrassments, to nourish partisan 
prejudices, to devise sordid intrigues, to entangle our 
foreign affairs, to exaggerate failures, and to supplant true 
loyalty by grumbling, murmuring, low-mouthing treason. 
We were truly passing through the Valley Forge of our 
existence. But God has lifted us from the Vale of Humilia¬ 
tion. The late victories give the highest claims for thanks¬ 
giving to the Great Disposer of human events, so they may 
redound to His glory. The President gives the Nation’s 


28 


■# 


thanks to the Army and Navy for their loyalty, energy, 
courage, and success; orders that all arsenals and navy 
yards in the United States shall thunder forth to the nation 
in a hundred mighty peals these brilliant achievements on 
land and sea; and then truly covers the whole field of 
gratitude to God, honor to the dead, comfort to the suffer¬ 
ing, and faith in our cause by the following proclamation: 

Executive Mansion, | 

Washington City, Sept. 3d, 1864. ) 

The signal success that Divine Providence has recently vouchsafed 
to the operations of the United States fleet and army in the harbor of 
Mobile, and the reduction of Fort Powell, Fort Gaines, and Fort Mor¬ 
gan, and the glorious achievements of the army under Major-General 
Sherman, in the State of Georgia, resulting in the capture of the city of 
Atlanta, call for devout acknowledgment to the Supreme Being in 
whose hands are the destinies of nations. It is therefore requested that 
on next Sunday, in all places of worship in the United States, thanks¬ 
giving be offered to Him for His mercy in preserving our national ex¬ 
istence against the insurgent rebels who have been waging a cruel war 
against the Government of the United States for its overthrow, and also 
that prayer be made for Divine protection to our brave soldiers and 
their leaders in the field, who have so often and so gallantly perilled 
their lives in battling with the enemy, and for blessing and for comfort 
from the Father of mercies to the sick, wounded, and prisoners, and to 
the orphans and widows of those who have fallen in the service of their 
country, and that He will continue to uphold the Government of the 
United States against all the efforts of public enemies and secret foes. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Let us then give God tbe thanks due his name this day, 
because his mercy has followed and preserved us. Let us 
obey this Executive call, because victory marks our move¬ 
ments, hope cheers our people, secret foes have been 
thwarted, and peace is unfolding her sacred banners. 

We thank God to-day for the solid facts that spring from 
the things thus far detailed that make for peace. The cap¬ 
ture of Mobile forts are solid facts. The fall of Atlanta, at 
last accomplished by the final telescopic evolutionary move¬ 
ments of Sherman’s army, is a solid fact. The possession 
of the Weldon Railroad is a solid fact that will weigh well 
in the final conflict for Union and peace. These events 
that predict so much, are the way-marks to tell the historian 


29 


where entombed are portions of the rebel Confederacy. It 
rejoices the heart of an American, and of a friend of univer¬ 
sal liberty, to mark the heroic endurance and perseverance 
of that great army as it marched forward to victory. After 
digging, intrenching and marching for months on a line of 
over two hundred miles, daily skirmishing and fighting, 
scaling and flanking artificial and natural fortresses, unfit¬ 
ting over fifty thousand insurgents for rebellion, stamping 
glory upon scores of battle-fields, enshrining in human 
affections the names and deeds of hundreds of gallant 
heroes, and delivering myriads of the oppressed from the 
tyranny of slavery, the Union army finally stands at the 
apex of the triangular mountain region over which it 
fought, holding in its grasp the keys of the granary, store¬ 
house, arsenal, workshop,—the wealth of the rebellion, and 
sending back the news to the friends of freedom in the im¬ 
mortal words of its leader: “ So Atlanta is ours, and fairly 
won.” The great wealth of bravery, courage, sacrifice, to 
gain this point, was all poured out for peace. For peace 
those heroes fought, for peace they stood their ground, kept 
their ranks unbroken, pierced the valleys, climbed the 
mountains, forded rivers, charged in the face of death, 
gained victories,—for peace they fought and bled, and died, 
—for peace the surviving turned and left in honored graves 
their fallen comrades, then pressed on for the prize, chant¬ 
ing the sad dirge as they invincibly moved:— 

‘‘Brothers, farewell! 

A tear on your dust—and again back to life— 

But you will return not with us to the strife, 

With a sigh we commit the dear forms to the sod, 

The dust to the earth, and the spirits to God. 

Brothers, farewell!” 

Could an old Roman appear on the earth to-day, and see 
the embattling hosts beneath whose tread the nation rocks 
with earthquake power, and hear the salvos of artillery 
thundering forth, from thousands of batteries, some as the 
key-note to deadlier struggles, and others as the glorious 
salutations to the triumphant results of the war-giants’ 
cyclopean blows, his Roman imagery, though martial and 



30 


majestic, would fade in comparison with, the dreadful reality 
around him. It would indicate to him a deeper ambition 
for military glory, than when Caesar wept in Spain by the 
statue of Alexander, or when Hannibal thundered at the 
gates of Rome. Or, could a mailed-clad warrior of the long 
ago castled-Rhine, behold to-day, the embattlement-lined 
banks of American rivers, and the fiery war clouds burst¬ 
ing over American harbors for the possession of sea port 
cities and strongholds for defense, he would imagine the 
science of this age was war, grim, savage WAR ; whereas 
the American patriot and lover of freedom to all of God’s 
children, can see flowing from all these terrible events, more 
sacred protection to the sanctities of the human heart, and 
more substantial guarantees for the equal rights all. 

But should an old soldier for the ancient empire come 
forth from his grave and see that through divisions and 
compromises of domestic enemies, Rome has fallen—he 
might exclaim: 

“ ’Tis Rome demands our tears, 

The mistress of the world, the seat of Empire, 

The nurse of heroes, the delight of gods 
That humbled the proud tyrants of the earth, 

And set the nations free—Rome is no more.” 

May the righteous influence and moral power of the 
American Union humble the proud tyrants of the earth and 
set the oppressed nations free, because of the mighty sacri¬ 
fice of heroes for the cause ; but should any dead hero, who 
fell in the morning of conscious victory to him, mingle 
again with these earthly scenes, may he not like the old 
Roman, catch first the epitaph of his country’s ruin,— 
“ America is no more —but, those other words, “ America, 
strong and free, because just.” 

Besides the victories that cheer us, let us thank God for 
his providential abundance to supply the nation’s commis¬ 
sariat. Our harvests have yielded bountifully. God has 
enabled us to feed both ourselves and our starving enemies. 
For this blessing and privilege, let us be humbled and 
thankful. Why has famine not stared us even in the face? 
Why has pestilence not thinned our ranks, while our 


31 


armies have been fighting in pestilential climes ? Famine 
and Pestilence invariably go joined together after the heels 
of war. Truly God has favored us. The wealth of the 
, mines as well as of the soil has been developed. Exigencies 
reveal our native resources. National confidence in our 
future has thereby been strengthened, and the National 
Treasury has become the most reliable Savings Bank of the 
peoples’ hard earned wages. We thank God for these evi¬ 
dences of stability, and quiet determination to be united and 
free. We would be base, indeed, did we not humbly return 
to the Great Giver of all good our sincere and prayerful 
thanks for these manifold blessings. 

Now, my dear friends, our cause is just, the war is upon 
us, our duty is plain, the end is near. The work still is 
great. But success follows unflinching, pressing onward. 
We may meet discomfiture, but may we never endure dis¬ 
grace. Confidence in the future of the Republic we want, 
like that of the old Roman, who, while hedged within the 
city’s walls, bought at an enormous price the ground on which 
Hannibal’s beseiging legions were encamped without. Let 
us look beyond the present tumultuous distress. Faith in 
the ultimate triumph of a just cause will bear with moun¬ 
tain firmness the shock of war-clouds when hurling their 
bolts hotly and heavily upon us. We know that righteous 
deliverance will gild our future history. 

The nation wants peace. The army wants peace. But 
shall national honor be supplanted by an ignoble, ruinous, 
war-engendering peace ? Shall we overlook the crimes of 
rebellion? No. The rebellion is too nearly crushed to 
cease for awhile to nurse it into life again. Too many 
battles fought, victories won; too much hard labor to break 
the confederacy into a number of separate divisions, to 
weaken it, to wrest from its grasp its great rivers not long 
since lined with batteries, to regain all its large cities and 
sea ports, and two-thirds of all its once fortified territory, 
and too many sacrifices to deliver its poor oppressed suf¬ 
ferers from the most barbarous despotism known in time— 
too much has been done and gained to sue now for peace 
except upon unconditional allegiance to law, except upon 


32 


the re-establishment of the Nation upon a basis that will 
secure to all the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. We want no other peace. The bar¬ 
barities practiced upon our soldiers at Andersonville would 
sanction no other peace. The blood of the pioneer settlers 
of the West, murdered by Indians instigated by rebel 
emissaries, speaks for no other peace. The graves of ten 
thousands of heroes, scattered over the rebellious domain, 
send up a sepulchral wail against any peace, but one just and 
righteous. Loss of national honor is worse than civil war. 
The army now holds the national virtue in its keeping. It 
will never yield to an ignoble cry for peace. The army 
will £ive us a peace, permanent because righteous, when the 
rebellion lies gasping and bleeding, and crying for mercy 
at the feet of an outraged, yet re-established and glorious 
Union. While we thank God for the prospects, by His 
help, let us fight and pray for peace. John Knox always 
had his country at the throne of grace. “ Give me Scotland, 
or else die.” Queen Mary feared his prayers more than an 
army of ten thousand men. Pray then for the American 
Union. It is worthy of the most earnest prayers. Push 
forward the conquering sceptre until the majesty of law is 
vindicated and righteousness reigns. Your record, then for 
truth and Christ will be royal. It will 

“ Tell on ages—Tell for God.” 


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